But I can borrow some. Why will I need it?”
“If you attempt to shadow me, I’ll rub bear grease all over you and open the lion cage at the zoo,” she said sweetly.
There was a slow, deep chuckle. “Joceline, my love, I have two tame lions who live with me back home in South Africa. I’m not intimidated by big cats. However, if you’d like to rub me all over with bear grease,” he added in a deep, velvety tone, “I can be in your office in two minutes flat. I’ll even run red lights!”
She slammed the receiver down, her lips making a thin line. She muttered under her breath.
A minute later, the phone rang again. She jerked it up and, without thinking, said, “If you call here one more time, Rourke, I’ll have you up for harassment!”
There was a faint pause, as if she’d shocked the listener. Then Kilraven’s voice came over the line, deep and very somber.
“Joceline, I’ve got some bad news.”
“Winnie …?” she began worriedly, because she was fond of his wife. They often went shopping together.
He swallowed. “Not Winnie. My brother …”
“Jon? Something’s happened to Jon?” She sounded almost hysterical and she didn’t care. Harold Monroe’s phone call came back to her in a flash of anguish. She gripped the phone, hard. “What happened?”
“He’s been shot. Critically. He’s at the Hal Marshall Memorial Medical Center … Hello? Joceline?”
He was talking to himself. Joceline had her purse over her shoulder. She ran to Betty’s small office and told her what had happened.
“I’m on my way to the hospital. I’ll call you the minute I know something!”
Betty started to mention that Jon’s family was certainly gathered around him, and would relay any news. But the look on Joceline’s face stopped the words in her mouth. She wondered if Joceline was even aware of her feelings for Jon Blackhawk, which were blatant on her drawn, worried face.
CHAPTER SIX
KILRAVEN WAS SITTING in an uncomfortable chair in the emergency room waiting area, with Winnie beside him. He looked up when Joceline walked in. His expression, usually unreadable, was as concerned as hers.
“Have you heard anything new?” she asked, pausing to greet Winnie with a hug.
“They’ve taken him into surgery,” Kilraven replied grimly. “They said they’ll know more when they operate. He was shot in the back. In the back!”
Joceline’s face flamed. “I hope they find Harold Monroe and hang him.”
Kilraven nodded. “I can’t prove it, but I’m sure he’s the one who did it. And I’ll find the proof, no matter how long it takes me!”
“I’ll help,” Joceline agreed harshly.
“Want some coffee?” Winnie asked her husband, who nodded.
“I’ll go get it,” he said, starting to rise.
She pushed him back down. “I need the exercise. The doctor says it’s good for me to move around. But thanks, sweetheart.” She bent to kiss him. “Would you like a cup, Joceline?” she added.
“Yes, please.” Joceline dug for a dollar bill and handed it to her insistently. “You’re not buying me coffee,” she said stubbornly. “I’m an employee of a federal agency and I won’t be the subject of a bribery scandal,” she added with mock hauteur.
Winnie chuckled. “Have it your way, Elliott Ness.”
Kilraven frowned. “He headed up the FBI in Chicago during racketeering days. He was incorruptible.”
“The history professor,” Winnie teased, and kissed him again.
“I’m not up on American history unless it has Scots connections.” His area of expertise was seventeenth-century Scottish history.
“Was Elliott Ness a Scot?” Joceline wondered aloud.
“I’ll look into it,” Kilraven promised.
Winnie went to get coffee. Kilraven and Joceline sat rigidly, watching the doors open and close as medical personnel in green scrubs went to and fro, occasionally flanked by white-coated physicians with stethoscopes draped around their necks.
“Busy place,” Kilraven ventured.
“Yes.” She turned over her purse. “Have you called your mother?”
“She’s on her way here,” he said. “I made her promise not to drive.” He grimaced. “She’s wrapped two cars around telephone poles in the past five years.”
“Oh. She drives like you, then,” Joceline said with a pleasant smile.
He glared at her. “I have never wrecked a car.”
“Sorry. I forgot. They were blown out from under you. Major difference.” She was nodding.
He shifted. “Everybody gets bomb threats.”
“Yours aren’t threats, and how lucky that you weren’t in the cars at the time they exploded.”
“Can I help it if I inspire passion in people?”
“People in black ops do that, I’m told.” She chuckled.
He shrugged. “I’m trying to walk the straight and narrow, especially now,” he said with a smile. “I’m doing the most boring job the company could find for me. Surveillance.”
“It’s safer than what you used to do,” she said. She frowned. “Did you send Rourke after me?”
“Yes, I did,” he said, “and stop trying to run him off. Monroe is deadly serious, as you might have noticed today. Jon told me that Monroe said you’re next. You have a small child and the two of you live in an apartment building with no security to speak of. Rourke will protect you.”
“Who’s going to protect him from me?” she wondered aloud.
“That is a good question.”
They paused to stare at the door leading to the surgical wing. A surgeon in green scrubs came out it, looked toward Kilraven and motioned for him to join him. Joceline went, too, ignoring the surgeon’s obvious surprise. Under other circumstances, Kilraven would have chuckled at her concern for a boss she constantly drove nuts.
Joceline could hear her own heart beating and hoped Kilraven wouldn’t notice. She was scared to death. If Jon Blackhawk died, it would be like the sun going out forever. She refused to even entertain the possibility. But she knew that he could die. And might. She gripped her purse like a lifeline, hoping, praying … let him live, please, I’ll go to church more, I’ll give to charity more, I’ll be a better person, be kinder,
